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Atlas 618 6" Lathe Restoration..attempt.

I've come into possession of an old 6" lathe, an Atlas 618 to be exact. It went through a massive barn/shop fire that eradicated all of my in-laws most prized possessions. Grandpa salvaged this and stashed it in his barn for a rainy day (back in 2005ish), which happened to be when he heard me talking about getting a hobby mill. I forgot to grab pics of the motor mount and pulleys (pulleys & motor melted)

^ And that is AFTER it soaked in diesel fuel and had the first coat of burned paint scrubbed off. (hence the black plastic for the ride home, STINKY)

Being I have zero hands on experience machining, let alone ever had one on one time with a lathe, I used my best friend the internet and was able to find the manual. With that, I had the confidence to dig in and start cleaning things up. To get an idea of how bad it was, here's a before and after of the two base plates:

At that point, I figured it had a chance of being returned to glory. My new best friends for the past 2 weekends, and probably for the next couple months:

I'm hitting it in the three part process - WD w/ a brass hand brush --> Wire brush in the Ryobi when called for --> Rinse & scrub again w/ Napthla --> Rinse w/ water --> Evapo-rust bath until clean. I may run some parts through the ringer again just because the evapo-rust is leaving black & yellow goo here and there (like 1 in 10 parts had it, mostly showed up on internal threads). It comes off easy, but if I'm going to all this trouble, it might as well be the best it can be. Then I dust em' with some gun oil to keep em' sharp until(if?) the day of reassembly comes.

The rust remover is expensive, I got it on sale at Harbor Freight for $20 something. Hunting around for containers I found some coffee cans I was saving to shoot at, that would fit most parts of the lathe to a satisfactory depth. I just threw the tailstock in this evening.

The Evapo-rust is so far proving to be worth every penny, these fasteners and misc parts came out looking damn near brandnew. Granted, I still did a lot of brass brush/wire brush in the drill kinda scrubbing, but ALL signs of rust disappear after a night or two soaking.

I even started throwing in my hand tools I was so impressed.

Before I could get any further, my dad had showed up to accept delivery of my Grizzly G0704 for me while I was at work, and he went ahead and pressure washed the lathe! So now I'm real lucky I have the manual, because I would have no idea what screws went where without it. I won't doubt I don't find up I'm missing some because of the pressure wash shooting them off in the yard somewhere.

Now when I made it to the tool holder? I realized I had made my first and probably game changing noob mistake.

Look closely...

The metal buckled and raised up where I was tapping it with a hammer to get it off of the main rail!! Hopefully it's not a deal breaker and I can fix it to at least make the lathe functional. Live and learn.

Which is exactly why I'm attempting to restore this lathe, I know I could go out and buy a brand new one for $1000 or even less, but I love the idea of making this one my own sort of, and all the knowledge that will come going down this path. Which is where you guys come in!

The melted parts I mentioned earlier. The mount will survive, and that's all that matters. The pulleys, belts, motor can all be replaced off the shelf. I actually saw a motor that matched the specs called out in the manual at Harbor Freight the other day.

A shot of the tailstock about 4-5 hours into the evapo-rust. Lookin good, back in it goes for the night.

The wife is on board with the project - she scored me a nice barstool for the shop. I was standing at that battlestation for a good 7 hours today. I also installed that bench vise today, it's a Home Cheapot Irwin 6" Mechanics vise. New shop light installed above as well. Which might not sound like much to you guys, but I don't even change my own oil. (I'll be applying for my man-card if I even get this lathe reassembled, functional or not!) Going to have to make some new jaws for the vise (they don't seem very tall) when I get familiar with the new mill, but otherwise it will do the job for me until I can justify a $2000 Wilton. (in which case I'll knock the garage over and start fresh if I'm rolling that $deep$)

Tried printing the manual PDF as a "booklet", didn't work out so well with out a duplexing printer on 8.5x11. Might have to sneak it in at work on the big Canon and kick it out on 11x17's, folded & stapled for me.

Eventually I'll have a big flat panel or projector hooked up to the future CNC PC and won't have to have papers flying around. At the very least a big magnetic whiteboard that I can tac prints & drawings up to.

Well there ya go someone who uses a hammer to loosen the saddle of the bed ways,tsk I ask you.

If you have to use a hammer on machinery then do use a block of wood to take the pounding not the machines components.

Yeah, I did that a couple days ago and bought a 1lb brass hammer today. Go figure. I wasn't thinking - forged hammer-head vs. old cast iron. It IS entirely possible that it was like that when I got it, as I didn't notice it until this afternoon, and I removed it earlier this week. I can't believe it would warp so easily, but I'll take the fall for it because where I was hitting it is at exactly that spot (and I assume everyone else who may have banged on it in the past 35 years).

Well with the dent in it you're not going to be able to use the crosslide ie the piece that the toolholder is sitting on.

Sounds like a project for the new mill I got! (once it's CNC'd of course)

BUT, if I recall correctly the crosslide..slid..right on off. If it's the part I'm thinking of it had a couple of metal bars and some shim stock on the one side. Probably won't be the most accurate lathe, even if shimmed to function?

Blessing in disguise, maybe.

Now you have an excuse to pitch the cross-slide altogether, bolt some linear rails on the bed, and make a gang-tooled machine. That thing's got the perfect mounting configuration for it - the rails on the flat bed ways and the ballscrew in the middle.

Regarding the upset you caused with your hammer on the saddle's dovetails for the cross-slide - don't get too worried about it. Find a short straightedge, a sharp flat file or two and flatten it out. If I were you, to begin with, I'd protect the undamaged areas with masking tape until you get it close. You'll want to scrape the last few thou. A bench grinder and one of those files will net you a usable scraper in about 30 seconds. Do a bit of Googling on scraping for some pointers.

You will have far less chance of destroying the saddle if you do it by hand as opposed to trying to mill it. Unless you plan on recutting that slideway completely (and maybe making a thicker gib as well), just do it by hand. Just take your time (and I'm sure you can do this in less than an hour anyway)

Take a walk through a job shop some time and you will see some pretty nasty looking dings on lathe ways and such that accumulate over the years from various screw ups.

Have fun with this machine. It's nice to see that your grandpa saved it and that you are resurrecting it.

Marv

PS, don't pound on stuff with that brass hammer either! It will cause almost as much damage as a steel one. Get a wood block in between like Henry said.

Regarding the upset you caused with your hammer on the saddle's dovetails for the cross-slide - don't get too worried about it. Find a short straightedge, a sharp flat file or two and flatten it out. If I were you, to begin with, I'd protect the undamaged areas with masking tape until you get it close. You'll want to scrape the last few thou. A bench grinder and one of those files will net you a usable scraper in about 30 seconds. Do a bit of Googling on scraping for some pointers.

Bench grinder is on the list for the shop. I bought a cheap $10 file set the other day because I don't have anything at all. I'll definately do some research before I go scraping on it. I'm starting think it was like that to begin with, just so I can blame someone else. I mean, 35 years and I'm the only one that's hit it w/ a hammer?

You will have far less chance of destroying the saddle if you do it by hand as opposed to trying to mill it. Unless you plan on recutting that slideway completely (and maybe making a thicker gib as well), just do it by hand. Just take your time (and I'm sure you can do this in less than an hour anyway)

Yeah I meant just remaking the part completely once I get my mill CNC'd. Sounds like another good learning experience.

This has been real interesting so far, it's amazing to see how this thing was built. I've got the entire tailstock and slideway assemblies apart and soaking in the evaporust. I think it'd be a good idea to get these put back together (gonna be a chore to sort all these screws & nuts back out) during this workweek, and hopefully I can tackle the headstock & main leadscrew/gears this coming weekend. Probably going to take another jug or two of evaporust to get anywhere submerging the bed well enough. I snagged a big plastic container to get ready for it, if I can't get the juice deep enough I'll just rotate the part every day.

I will have to look it up but there is a guy that has a lot of parts for these lathes. He is all so very resonable so it want be a arm & leg for what you need. I find the linnk a bit later and post back.

@Lucky - Sweet. Mostly like be getting some things from there, there's a part here and there that feels like it was warped from the heat, things don't rotate true and you can feel it hanging.

Some more pics:

Pictured is the Carriage Assembly and Tailstock Assembly. Holy $hit! I'm going to be there a while putting all that back together. Tailstock, after getting WD40'd, Naptha, Evaporust, WD, Evaporust Evaporust, WD, STILL has some paint on it. It seems endless.

On to the Lead Screw & Feed Gear Assembly:

Let me clean that up for ya...

WD40 is an amazing thing. Got all the little parts soaking in some Naptha to help get the last layer of gunk off and expose anymore rust hiding.

I got stuck here:

I dunno how to get this piece off the leadscrew...there's a little woodruff looking key, but it looks like it's tucked up inside. No idea how to pop that out or if I even need to. It's also groove pinned on both sides. I'd like to be able to set the screw in the evaporust and get her shined up.

Whattya think? Scrub it up best I can and leave it alone? The only reason I quit is because my can of WD40 is empty, and my brushes have had it, esp the brass one.